Electronic mail (email) and peer-to-peer instant messaging (chats) are some of the predominant electronic communication tools used for transferring text today. Both email and chat communications may typically contain information of interest to third parties, i.e., those who are not directly involved in the original dissemination of the communication.
Methods for searching email and/or chat communications in order to simplify the gathering of information contained in the communications are known in the art. KVS, of Berkshire, UK, produces “Enterprise Vault™” software, which archives and indexes email and allows searches of the archived email by meta-data (information apart from the content of the email such as subject, sender, or recipient), content of the email, and attachments to the email. IBM Corporation, of Armonk, N.Y., produces “DB2® Content OnDemand” software which manages and permits indexing of email. The software allows searching according to indexed fields, and emails may be retrieved according to results of the searches.
A software package termed “Mutt,” which may be found at http://mutt.blackfish.org.uk, enables tagging the contents of email messages. Mutt also enables emails to be searched using a variety of search methods, including incorporation of “wildcards” in the searches.
An article on “TeamWave Workplace 4.2” software, and an article on a related project TeamRooms, may be found at http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/2520 and at http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/grouplab/projects/TeamRooms. html. The articles describe how a virtual room for meetings may be provided. People can leave messages, documents and annotations for others, or work on them together when occupying the room at the same time.
An article entitled “Email as Spectroscopy: Automated Discovery of Community Structure within Organizations,” by Tyler et al., published in December 2003 by HP Labs (Hewlett Packard Corp., Palo Alto, Calif.), which is incorporated herein by reference, may be found at http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idi/papers/. The article describes construction of a network of relationships between email users, by using the names of the sender and the receiver of each email analyzed.
Databases listing interests and roles of personnel in a company are known in the art. For example, IBM Corporation maintain a “Persona Page” database which is accessed within an intranet. In the database, employees may list an email address and project information.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,581,072 to Mathur, et al., whose disclosure is incorporated herein by reference, describes methods for identifying and accessing electronic documents stored in a network environment. Documents of interest to a user may be identified and accessed, without compromising the user's privacy, by a user system which receives index information concerning the documents.